1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a multilayer ceramic capacitor.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, the reduction in size for mobile electronic devices has been advanced. Mobile electronic devices have a large number of multilayer ceramic electronic components mounted, and with the reduction in size for the mobile electronic devices, the reduction in size has been also required for the multilayer ceramic electronic components. Furthermore, for multilayer ceramic electronic components with external electrodes formed on both end surfaces of laminated bodies including internal electrodes, there is a need to form, in order to mount the components on wiring patterns of circuit boards, solder fillets that spread like foundations of mountains between the external electrodes and the wiring patterns. Therefore, there is a need to form the wiring patterns of the circuit boards to undergo an increase in size by the solder fillets from the end surfaces of the multilayer ceramic electronic components, and the spaces for mounting the multilayer ceramic electronic component will, thus, be increased. However, with the reduction in size for the mobile electronic devices, in addition to the reduction in size for the multilayer ceramic electronic components, it is also required that the mounting intervals between components mounted on the circuit boards should be reduced to reduce the mounting spaces.
Now, there is, as a multilayer ceramic electronic component, for example, a multilayer ceramic capacitor 1 that has internal electrodes 2 formed to be perpendicular to mounting surface for a circuit board, with the internal electrodes 2 extended to external electrodes 3 formed on the mounting surface, as shown in FIG. 14. This multilayer ceramic capacitor 1, which is able to be mounted on a wiring pattern of the circuit board with the external electrodes 3 formed on one mounting surface, requires no solder fillets that spread externally from ends of the multilayer ceramic capacitor, thereby making it possible to reduce the space for mounting the multilayer ceramic capacitor 1 (see Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 10-289837).
In this regard, recent multilayer ceramic capacitors have been used in more severe environments as compared with conventional capacitors, and thus, for example, with shocks caused by falls of mobile devices, such as cellular phones and portable music players, and as for capacitors used in in-car devices, such as ECUs, multilayer ceramic capacitors may be cracked with external electrode ends or the like of the multilayer ceramic capacitors as starting points by deflection stress generated through thermal expansion and contraction of mounting boards in response to thermal cycles.
However, in the case of the internal electrode pattern (that is, the internal electrode pattern such as first internal electrodes and second internal electrodes opposed) of the multilayer ceramic capacitor disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 10-289837 as shown in FIG. 14, when the multilayer ceramic capacitor is cracked as described above, short circuits may be caused between the internal electrodes with different polarities, thereby causing short circuit defects.